This time around, The Contortionist stopped by Mojoe’s of Joliet with Revocation, who also released a phenomenal album in 2014 [review], Fallujah, who did much the same [review], the always-stellar TOOTHGRINDER, and Chicago locals Oceanwalker.

2014 was a phenomenal year for live music (of the heavy kind) in Australia, however it seems as though the best show was saved for last. Just a few weeks ago, Thy Art is Murder, accompanied by Psycroptic, Revocation, Fit For an Autopsy and sloom pioneers, Disentomb, toured around Australia on a quest for aural decimation. Not only did both Brisbane shows sell out, there was such a large fan response that a third show had to be organised to cater to those who missed out. Metal bands selling out the same venue three times in a row, in the space of two days is literally unheard of here. Thankfully, I was fortunate enough to photograph the very last night of the tour, thanks to my good buddies in Psycroptic.

It looks like the tour announcements for 2015 just keep rolling in, and this time it’s one of the most diverse lineups yet. Indiana’s progressive metal powerhouse The Contortionist are going out on their second headlining run across North America in support of their third LP, Language.

Welcome, one and all, to the Heavy Blog Is Heavy Album of the Year list! This year, we did something a bit different. Instead of running staff members’ top 25 or top 10 lists, we went all sophisticated and created a composite Top 50 list. We’ll leave the statistical games behind the scenes but suffice it to say that we didn’t just vote on the list and its order. More subtly, this list represents the different rankings staff members gave albums on scale of 1-25. After we’re done running the complete list, we’ll also have a section where you can peep each member’s top 10 and an Outliers list: albums that made individual top 10’s but not the final Top 50.

The albums that you see below, from 50-26, are many of which we might call “wildcards.” Many of these albums either took us by complete surprise or are in genres we don’t normally cover on the website. Rather than restrict our list to just metal releases though, we wanted this list to be a true reflection of the full tastes of our eclectic staff.

I’ll shut up now, OK? Head on over the jump for the full list. 2014 was an amazing year and we thank each and everyone of you for being with us for it. We can’t wait for 2015! Let’s get to it.

Tasmanian technical death metal veterans Psycroptic are about to drop their self-titled album early next year and have decided to get the ball rolling now with a brand new music video! While it may be just a performance video at its core, the film quality helps recapture some of the low-budget videos that American death metal bands were releasing in the early-to-mid 90s. Check it out after the jump!

Only a handful of metal bands today can claim to be carrying the torch of the future of metal. Boston’s own Revocation are one of those bands. Back in 2008, the band released their excellent debut album Empire of the Obscene, which was an insane hybrid of thrash, progressive and technical death metal, but for whatever reason, it flew under many a metalheads’ radars. However, a year later the band released Existence Is Futile, and with that album, Revocation single-handedly took the metal world by storm. People began to pay very close attention to this young and insanely talented band from Boston, and they have been ever since. As evidenced by their subsequent albums, all of which are fantastic, Revocation have progressed and matured very rapidly from a young band to a modern metal juggernaut, and the band’s latest album, Deathless, is their finest hour yet.

I’ve had the Revocation album for a little under a month now, and it’s been on constant rotation since I got it. I can safely say that it’s definitely the band’s work, and combines a little bit of everything that made their last 4 releases fantastic and put it into a pot to make what will surely become on of the best albums of 2014. Unfortunately, many of my friends have been left in the dust, unable to hear more than just the singles the band released over the past few weeks. Well, fret not! Now you can stream the new record in full! Check it out after the jump!

Anyone remotely familiar with the death and thrash scenes has without a doubt heard the name Revocation once or twice. The Boston natives have done an exemplary job of establishing their place in both genres in a very short period of time. The band has already released twosingles from their upcoming album Deathless, and just in case the band hasn’t gotten you pumped enough yet, they’ve provided further enticement with a new track from the album, titled ‘Labyrinth of the Eyes,’ streaming courtesy of Metal Underground.